This week I've read an interesting chapter of a book, called Long History of New Media, which is actually not published yet, but our professor for this course (New media and society) enabled us to see the page proofs.
I’ve read a chapter by Devon Powers with a title The End of New Music? and it has really opened up some ideas for me. The author talks about the importance of “newness” in music industry. He reminds us how we are always anticipating new songs from our favorite artists and add the latest singles to our music collections or mp3 players and i-pods. But what really counts as new music? Is a remix of an old song, which just came out new music? How long does certain song count as new music? What about releases of an unpublished old recordings, is this new music? For example, Bruce Springsteen released his album The Promise in 2010, which is actually a compilation of an old, previously unreleased songs, is this new music? Who decides what new is?
Devon Powers explains that the concept of “newness” in music industry and also in more general terms is a discursive construction, which means that it is temporal and ontological, but certainly not natural. That is why we should ask ourselves: “Under what circumstances, and to what ends, does music come to be understood as new?” At this point, Powers connects the idea of “newness” with the capitalist system of our society and makes an excellent reference to Marx and Engels and their perspective on how novelty in its broadest sense aids in the perpetuation of capitalism. Music industry is structured to profit from newness and that is why it requires not just material products, but also a disourse that naturalizes its continued production. So how does music industry naturalize the idea of new? Through music journalism and music charts! They both have major influence on the popularity of artists, songs and albums and they both continually renew constantly. Bu ironically it is also true that once a music is “cemented” as new in charts, album reviews, it is also what causes that music to go out of style and be replaced. Powers summarized that “new music depends, both discursively and materially upon old music, regardless of whether or not that dependence is articulated.”
New media, new “newness”?
New technologies which have in some way helped to perpetuate the consumption of new music have also transformed the concept itself. Today, music is mostly available online even before the albums are released to the markets. Music journalism is no longer limited to specialized magazines, newspapers, nowadays everyone can open-up their blogs and comment upon or evaluate music. The conditions have changed and the concept of new has changed along. The charts are now measuring a “hype value”, which ranks the music according to what is garnering excitement at the moment. Even the artist sometimes leak their music to the web in order to gain attention. So when is music new in such circumstances?
Power suggests that instead of focusing on the concept of newness, we should consider concept of attention. We should be raising questions like “how innovations in musical style, sound technology, circulation and distribution inspire different kinds of attending practices over time?” and “how audiences at different historical periods and diverse cultural contexts learn to attend?”.
Althought in this chapter, Power is talking about the concept of newness inside music industry; he is also uncovering something very important about the concept itself, which we can also relate to the newness of the media in general. The newness is culturally and socially constructed phenomenon, which is not natural and not even stable through the time and place. And sometimes it even serves as a efficient marketing tool, since nowadays everyone is obsessed with “new” (Just pay attention to advertising and try to find commercials, where there is no use of the word “new” in it!)
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